


Lex in Wonderland

by A_Brave_Owl



Category: DCU, Smallville, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clex - Freeform, Friendship, M/M, more than friendship, wholesome content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-12-28 02:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21129494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Brave_Owl/pseuds/A_Brave_Owl
Summary: Lex Luthor arrives in Smallville in another time. He is twenty-one, and Clark Kent is eighteen and in his last year of high school. Their first year together goes a bit differently ❤️Many years later, after they have both grown into the people that they are, full fledged Supervillain and Superhero, they must navigate their history, the most pressing end of the world, and their possible future, together or apart 🖤This story takes Lex Luthor as its primary point of view character.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First attempt at fan fic. Have written "original" fiction before, whatever that means in wonderland ┌༼ σ ‸ σ ༽┐.｡oO ( ♡ )

“You know, whenever we clash like this,” Lex Luthor said staring up at Superman from the marble floor. Superman was floating framed by the hole he’d make in the thick, Fungulass wall. A smart glass, durable and light, that Lex had grown over the city like fungus. Superman’s cape was softly alive in the wind, and beyond him stretched the miles and miles of mirrored city that looked as if it had been poured out of the sky like mercury. “It makes me think of all the times we came to each other’s rescue back in Smallville.” 

“You haven’t exactly made it easy for me,” Superman said. His voice was deeper now, Lex thought, but still clear and warm as Kansas soil between Lex’s fingers. Like a hand he’d held in another life. That farm boy earnestness still shone through, and it made Lex remember all those sunsets they had shared in that barn loft so many years ago now. Light as heavy as honey on Clark’s high cheek. Even as a boy, Clark had been a man. “But believe it or not, I’m still trying to come to your rescue, Lex.”

Lex laughed, a short almost wistful sound, and picked himself up off the ground. Superman floated down to Lex’s level. His eyes were the same ocean blue as the underside of an iceberg. Ancient and secret, and clear as glass at the same time.

“You know what the difference between us is, Clark?” Lex raised a soft fist and threw it lightly into the “S” on Superman’s chest. It was like touching the sky, for Lex. “I always believed that one man could change the world.”

“You did always think a lot of yourself,” Superman said, his face softening into a smile. That smile that could make a lost man believe again. Superman smiled this way because Superman never lost his sense of hope. This was why, Lex reflected, he could smile so purely in the face of so much evil.

Lex turned away, letting his hand drop off Superman’s chest. The rest of the room was bare and full of light. It, and high ceiling rooms like it, encased in Fungulass, had been Lex’s prison for months, maybe years. Inside Lex’s maze, even time had fallen.

“You got it all wrong, Clark,” Lex said. “I always thought a lot of you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex Falls down the rabbit hole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose it might be important to note that I've only seen through episode 18, season 1 so far. So... ｍ（．＿．）ｍ  
Already, though, it is clearly a powerful and tragic story of friendship and love ❤️

Lex spend down the road in his blue-silver Porsche, high and light. It was only when traveling at dangerous speeds like these that he almost felt he could fly. That he almost felt free.

Lex was twenty-one years old, and he did not believe in heroes. Justice was a cartoon character designed to sell an immorally sugar-dense breakfast cereal. God had been dead a long time, and the devils had carved flutes and harps from His bones, and mirrors from His eyes. Lex’s father had never, a day in his life, felt even a raindrop of remorse or a ghost’s touch of concern. Lex himself had never been in love.

Lex sometimes wondered if thoughts like these were bad for him somehow, if they poisoned his mind like too much bad TV. He shook them off, though he gave no visible sign, and leaned a little harder on the gas pedal.

The rural highway rolled out beneath Lex like a narrow field of black flowers. 

It was not a highway, really, but a two lane road that slithered out of some ancient and forgotten small town America like a blackened zombie’s arm reaching out to pull Lex under. Yes, he was being buried.

He leaned harder on the gas and the engine howled. He recalled that the last time he’d been in Smallville, on a business trip with his father as a child, he’d been pelted by meteors, nearly died, and lost all of his hair. The now famous meteor storm was the town’s only truly distinguishing feature. Though he now considered his bald head his edge, part of his distinct look, coming back here still felt like taunting God.

_ Luthors are not afraid _ , his father had said that day. _ You have a destiny _.

His father always liked a sick joke. For example, Lex was almost certain his father got Brazilian blowouts for his wildly luscious hair only when he was meeting with Lex, who was bald as a stone, and otherwise his father kept his hair tight and pulled back. Lex’s spies had confirmed this.

Lex shifted into sixth gear. The Porsche jumped like a horse about to sprout wings and take flight. There wasn’t a single other car on the road. It was farmland in every direction, spotted by occasional houses and actual barns in the distance. It didn’t even look real. Lex pushed the car harder, much faster than was safe on such a narrow road.

_ I might have a destiny _ , Lex thought staring down the road as if expecting it to vanish, to drop off into the edge of a cliff at any moment, _ but my destiny’s not going to have me. _

***

“This is your last chance, Lex,” his father, Lional Luthor, had said hours before. They had been in a highrise in Metropolis, one of the many anonymous corner offices Lional kept in buildings across the city like safe houses. This one was decorated mostly in polished wood, leather, gold accents. It had a view of a park with a small lake far below. It all felt a bit old fashioned to Lex.

“Funny,” Lex said, leaning forward in his chair and plucking a complicated looking metal puzzle off the desk. It was a lock box in the shape of a smashed atom. “I thought I’d used that up already.”

“This is no game,” Lional said. Lional was an imposing skeleton of man in an expensive suit, with luscious hair that fell in waves and framed his sharp face like a lion’s mane. The room smelled of wood polish and italian cologne and money. “The Smallville fertilizer plant used to have a leading margin in the industry, and it could again, with the right management, the right general at its head. And beyond that, I’m considering you directly responsible for this town’s economic mark on the world. I’m giving you the clay, just like I always do. Now you need to prove you can make something with it. You’ve already shown me that you can destroy.”

“And what exactly do you expect me to make with a crap factory, Dad? A bad smell?”

“ ‘He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces,’ ” Lionel said. He had eyes like gears which never stop turning in his head. Lex himself had these same eyes. One of the reasons he hated mirrors.

“_ The Art of War _. But running a small town factory isn’t exactly a war.” Lex had disassembled and assembled the puzzle several times already, and now he tossed it back onto the desk where it landed with a thunk. “If you want to see what I can really do, then give me real fight.”

“This _ is _ a real fight. Generals used to fight for kings. Now we fight for margins. Welcome to the real world, Lex.”

In truth, Lex knew that his father was right. It was a potentially very lucrative plant, and Lex had already thought of a dozen ways he might improve it, optimize the factory, modify product formulas, capture pieces of the market like squares on a game board. But these thoughts were as automatic and ingrained in him as his heartbeat, and they immediately bored him. The game of margins was a child’s game, and he had mastered it as a child. Boredom was one of the only things he could feel now. Boredom and anger and the urge to dominate. 

Lex had come to understand that he did not like himself very much, but he did not know how to be anyone else.

But for starters, Lex planned to run the fertilizer plant straight into the ground and the town along with it just to spite his father and himself. It would be easy. He’d looked over the dossier before this meeting. Smallville was mostly family farmers, failing small businesses, and factory workers. The whole place was hanging on by a thread. It was just their bad luck that they were his last chance when all he wanted to do with last chances about now was see them burn.

Lex said, “Do you ever worry that one of these days, when I return from whatever far, forsaken edge of the world you’ve most recently exiled me to, that you might not recognize me? That I might not be your son anymore?”

“You’re not my son now. I’m not raising a son. I’m grooming a successor. I’m raising a conqueror, a leader of men, a dragon.”

“You’re raising a monster,” Lex said, standing to leave. “And if this monster returns and destroys you one day, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

Lex turned to leave.

“It’s good to see you haven’t lost all your ambition, son!” Lional called after him in an almost singsong voice as the door shut behind him.

***

Had Lex wanted to crash his car on his way to Smallville? That tiny bridge on the edge of that small town seemed like a ludicrously insignificant place for a Luthor to die, much less to fall in love. Certainly, Lex hadn’t been driving at a safe speed. But looking back, some of it, certainly, was destiny, was fate. Just as his father had foretold. Smallville was a place of many entangled fates.

A flatbed truck had lost a metal coil from its cargo in the road sometime before Lex had arrived. Lex’s cellphone rang at the exact wrong time, and he’d run over the coil and lost control just before the bridge. Clark Kent, an absurdly and distractingly good looking dark-haired farm boy, had been standing in the exact wrong place on the bridge. The Porsche, Lex fighting for and losing control, had smashed into the boy, through the railing, out into the wild air above a deep river.

In that moment, Lex felt his entire body relaxing. As if every tension, every ambition, every hope, fear, dream, and shame he had carried all his life was leaving him at last. 

This was flight.

Through the windshield, Lex made eye contact with the boy on the hood of his car. He had bluest eyes Lex had ever seen. The boy looked concerned for him, but not afraid or in pain.

_ Sorry _, Lex wanted to tell him. But he was also glad that he would not have to face this moment, this last moment, alone. It was the first time he had not judged someone immediately upon meeting them.

The rest he did not remember well, though those few minutes obsessed him for years to come. Sometimes Lex wondered if he and Clark had actually died that day, and it was only their ghosts who risen out of that rushing water to find the world changed and full of dark miracles. To find himself changed. Before this, Lex had believe in nothing, and did not think himself capable of love.

Clark Kent was the man who made Lex Luthor believe in not only in heros, but in miracles.

What Lex remembered was this. A second impact. The crashing roar of rushing water. Weightlessness. Strong arms pulling him toward sunlight. Heavy lungs. Something that felt like a firm kiss on the grassy riverbank.

But perhaps that was only in a dream.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Wonderland, where they sky is always closer than you think, and rain never touches the ground 🖤

Lex wished he could see things just a little differently sometimes. His office was decorated in real wood. The rich, red tinted swirls of woodgrain combined with the smell of Superman, a mix of broad sky and sun warmed grasses and sweet pomade, reminded Lex of the office he’d used back in Smallville. Everything he saw reminded him of something else. For Lex, everything was an evaluation. Lex was feeling retrospective lately, but he supposed no one could blame him. Lex had not seen in Superman in years, since he had left the Earth to stop some world from ending far, far away.

The world was always ending, somewhere. Lex knew. There was always a need.

“But you didn’t break in my office window to dig up old bones, did you Clark? You came here for a confession,” Lex said. His back was still to Superman, and he pretended to survey his office. There were a few leather chairs and a sofa in the room. They were such a dark black leather that they looked almost purple in the right light. A shade darker than Lex’s collared shirt. A silver-chrome bar took up a corner. A few bookcases lined the walls, a mosaic of well read books. A broad Fungulass desk rounded off the room. The windows were high, and they shone just slightly with an opalescent shimmer like light reflecting off a soap bubble or an oil spot. Lex continued, “Was it my turn to confess, or yours? I forget.”

“I came here because I was worried about you. You’re in danger. There’s an attack planned on your life. A credible one. These guys aren’t messing around. They could be on their way here now. I need to get you somewhere safe,” Clark said, stepping forward and reaching out a hand for Lex’s shoulder.

Lex chuckled and stepped away toward the desk. Lex was not ready to touch him. The concern in Superman’s voice was pure and firm. If it had been anyone else, Lex would have called it childish. It was the concern of friend, Lex thought, bitterness soft in his mind like fruit that had fallen to the ground and melted away into the soil with the passing of seasons.

“I’m not as helpless as your usual damsels,” Lex said. He tapped a few commands into the Fungulass desk. It was colder than normal glass and just a little alive. Technically it was not glass at all, but fungus. It recognized his fingerprints, and a security control display opened, covering most of the desk’s surface. A 3D layout of the air space around the building. He could have shot Superman out of the air on his approach if he’d wanted. The office walls were lined with lead and secret compartments and other defenses encased in expensive wood. Many of them designed specifically for Superman. A kryptonite gas system. A redlight matrix in the ceiling. Other, more creative approaches. Lex had installed these almost hopefully, in the event of Superman’s return. Lex checked his watch. It had a silver casing and a purple-gold face engraved with a grinning crescent moon. “And if you’re talking about Wonderland goons, don’t worry. That attack’s not scheduled until later this evening. It’s only six-thirty.”

Lex turned back to Superman and leaned back on his desk. He grinned in a challenging, playful way, locking eyes with Superman. “It’s not a party until the sun goes down. Didn’t you know that, country boy?”

Lex was back in control of his face. It showed no sympathy or desire or injury now. He knew he looked confident and amused. Knowing and suggestive. Earnest. Impenetrable. His own face was one of the first things Lex had known he would need to master as a child until his father’s tutelage or torture. Next came his heart. But that had taken much longer.

Clark was frowning slightly. Lex read a slight undertone of suspicion in the frown. His lips looked moist, pink, as if he’d just applied a gloss. But then, Lex mused, he always looked this way. Even back in Smallville among the summer wind storms and dry earth,

“You already knew about the attack.” It was not a question, but a thought spoken aloud.

“I always keep my appointments,” Lex said, shrugging. He tapped a few commands on the desk and a metal security shutter began fluttering down over the window Superman had broken in. It sounded a little like a soft and distant train to Lex. “Now tell me the real reason you’re here, Clark. I’ll even get you started. You’ve only be Earthbound for four days, and the first few you spent on a farm in Kansas, recovering with your mother, so you’ve only been in Metropolis for two days. A lot’s changed since you left. You’re looking for answers. But the only way you could have found out about the attack on my life so quickly is if you found something Chloe Sullivan hid away for you. And you could have only found that if you were already looking for her. Unfortunately...”

“She’s missing,” Superman said. He had that concerned look on his face again. The high arches of his cheekbones cast wing-shaped shadows on his face. He looked a little thin to Lex, and for a moment Lex worried that even for Superman, who so often seemed invulnerable, traveling to a distant star and back again must take its toll.

Lex wanted to draw him a hot bath, fill it with rose petals and oils, and feed him chicken soup with a silver spoon until all the light had faded from the world, and it was just the two of them again. Instead Lex kept his face from moving, from giving away even the smallest piece of his heart.

Clark continued, “I did find what she was working on when she disappeared. She was reporting on something called The Wonderland Project. She mentions your name in her notes.”

“Then she must have also mentioned that we were working together.”

“Yes,” Superman said, hesitating. “But she didn’t exactly trust you.”

“Intelligent people rarely do,” Lex said. He reached back and typed in a few commands on the desk with one hand. A broad section of the wooden wall bled its color like a chameleon to reveal a Fungulass screen seamlessly embedded in the wall beside them. It showed scans of an official missing person’s report. Clohe’s name and photo at the top. “Being the good reporter you are, I assume you’ve already read the police report?”

“Yes,” Clark said.

“Then you know she was acting erratically for a week before her disappearance.”

“And that she was last seen getting into a high end sports car outside her apartment. It peeled away after she got in. After reading that I thought, who do I know who likes high end sports cars and driving too fast?” Clark said.

“So you did have another reason for coming here. You weren’t just worried about me.”

“Can’t it be both, Lex?” Clark said, smiling like offering a hand. His uniform, that red and blue jump, clung to his skin and outlined his body. It had been Lex, through a reverse engineer of Kryptonian technology, who had designed this fabric. In another lifetime. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just looking for a friend.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” Lex said, looking down and to the side at the desk. He typed in another command. The missing person’s report was replaced by a photograph of a black folder sitting on a desk. Across the front, in metallic blue lettering, were stamped the words _ Wonderland Project. _“How much do you know about the Wonderland Project, Clark?”

“Just that it has something to do with the new glass ceiling over Metropolis. The Fungulass canopy,” Clark said, turning to survey the mirror encased city through one of the unshuttered office windows. It looked a bit like a huge, mirrored circuits tent, Lex had always thought. It was miles across and covered nearly the entire city. It clung to the tallest buildings like candy coating then ballooned out, draped off of them at thirty or forty stories to make a high dome over the rest of the city. The glass looked like stiff fabric or spun sugar. It reflected a silver, cloudless sky. Clark turned back to Lex. “And I know that Clohe thought it was dangerous. Very dangerous.”

Lex sensed that Clark was holding something back, and he also knew that Clohe’s report could not have been that incompetent and incomplete. Superman was testing Lex, seeing if Lex would lie to him. Clohe had probably not ruled Lex out as the suspected mastermind in her notes. Smart girl that she was. Lex nodded to the screen and to the photo of the paper folder on the desk.

“These photos were very hard to get, and they’re the most complete summary of the Wonderland Project I’ve been able to obtain so far. I’ll let you read over them. But first, I have to ask you something, Clark. Something serious.”

“More serious than Wonderland?” Clark asked, raising an eyebrow. “More serious than Clohe?”

Lex smiled and sighed at once. “Clohe was right. The Wonderland Project is a threat not just to the entire city, but likely to the entire world. I want to stop it just as badly as Clohe did. But I’ll need your help to do it.”

“What’s your question, Lex?” Superman said. Then he grinned. It was an easy, boyish grin that flooded Lex’s body like a drug. “If you want to know if I’ll join you in your quest to save the world, then you know the answer is always a yes.”

Lex stared into Superman’s eyes. He returned Superman’s grin on pure instinct. It felt good to smile without any hidden emotions or agendas, like stretching a muscle he had not used in a long time.

It had always been easy to be himself around Clark.

Lex stopped grinding and said, “You once told me you trusted me. Do you still?”

Superman stopped grinning. In an instant, with only a few smooth steps, Superman had closed the distance between them. He had always been graceful and fast. Lex slid off the desk and leaned toward Superman. Superman was slightly taller than Lex, something that had always annoyed Lex when they were younger. So he had to look up.

Clark’s deep blue eyes seemed to hold every promise ever made since the first beat of the first man’s heart.

“I’ll always trust you, Lex,” Clark said. It was Clark again, standing before him, and it was as if no time and no pain had passed between them. “Even when you can’t trust yourself.”

Outside the window, Lex noticed, the sun was setting wildfire colors on the silver circus tent of the city. 

The party was about to begin.

***

Things had changed. Superman had left Earth nearly four years ago to solve a crisis having to do with the legacy of Krypton. A crisis. A world that was ending that only Superman could save. And he had left _ this _ world in Lex’s own dirty, black magic hands. Superman had a faith in people that Lex still struggled to understand.

The day he had left, Superman had come to say goodbye to Lex on the roof of the Lexcorp tower in downtown Metropolis. The night had been cool and clear, and the yellow and silver city lights shimmered like a million stars that had fallen out of the now empty, light washed sky. It was into this blackness, Lex knew, that Superman would disappear.

“Can you see the stars through all this pollution, Clark?” Lex asked as Superman appeared before him, hanging in the air above the fallen starscape of the city. 

Lex had always imagined that the world must look very beautiful and very ugly through Superman’s powerful eyes. Lex was sitting on the edge of the roof, one knee up and one leg dangling. He was wearing a dark purple shirt, a slim dark suit, and an expensive overcoat with a shimmering purple lining. Lex wasn’t looking at Superman. He was looking up at the sky. He did not see so much as sense Superman there in the air before him, like the pressure of a gentle ocean nipping at his feet.

Superman looked up, too, and for a moment they both considered the sky in silence. Then Superman looked back down at Lex. He grinned, that boyish, blinding grin. “I’ve always been more interested in looking at people, I guess.”

“You can count on the stars. If you can always see the stars, you’ll never be lost. Old sailors knew this, and they traveled the entire globe by nothing but the light of the stars to lead them.” Lex looked down from the blank sky to Superman. Superman wore his uniform. In flight, it clung tighter to his skin and made it seem as if he was stretching or flexing as he hovered. The familiar shape of his torso and the curve of his hips. He looked tired but determined. “The stars always lead them home again.”

“Stars can show you where to go, but they can’t show you what’s right. No matter how well you can see them. Only people can show you what’s right.”

Lex scoffed and stood. The winged tips of his shoes jutting over the light filled abyss. “Why are you here, Clark? You’ve already decided to leave. You want me to tell you it’s okay? You want my blessing? I won’t give it. For you it’ll only be a few months of travel. But back here, it’ll be years.”

“They need me out there,” Superman said softly. The high wind blew between them, and it smelled of cold concrete and glass. “There’s no one else who can help them.”

Lex did not look away. “There are other people who need you.”

“I know that. That’s why I’m here. I came to ask you for a favor, Lex. I know we haven’t always seen things the same way, but you were my closest friend in Smallville.”

“We were closer than friends,” Lex said, smirking. Saying it like a dare. Superman did not rise to the bait.

Superman continued, “I need you to protect things for me while I’m gone.”

“That’s more your side of the coin, Clark. I might want to be God, but I don’t have a savior complex.”

The city wind played in Superman’s dark swirl of hair. For a moment, he looked lonely, and Lex had a flash of intuition, the kind that sometimes revealed the end of difficult chess games or corporate negotiations to him. If Lex asked Superman to stay now, to stay with him, he would. Superman was tired and lonely, and he, like any man Lex knew, feared the loneliness of the dark. The supreme silence of empty space all around.

But if Superman stayed and some far flung place and its people were destroyed because of it, he would never forgive himself. Lex knew.

Clark had a generous heart that ached for all who bled.

“I know you want to be a good person. I always believed in you. And now I’m counting on you, Lex,” Superman said. “Don’t let me down.”

“Just because I’ve shown a little interest in keeping the world from destroying itself lately doesn’t suddenly make me a saint.”

“I can only leave because I trust you, Lex. Please, say you’ll do this for me.”

“Trust was always your weakness, Clark,” Lex said, stepping back off the ledge and onto the roof. He shrugged, showing his open palms like surrender. “Go then. I promise to behave while you’re gone, but as far as interceding on your behalf, well. You should know me by now. A Luthor always looks after himself first.”

“I do know you.” Superman smiled gently and floated to the edge of the roof. His toes touched the stone lightly, like a swimmer’s toes touching the wall of a pool. He crouched down so that, from the ledge, they were now at eye level. “You’re more than a Luthor.”

Superman winked at him, and his heart creaked in his chest. Then with a blur of soundless speed, Superman vanished straight into the starless sky.

His departure left Lex’s coat flapping in the wind like a dark handkerchief waving farewell. Lex felt a bit pathetic, like an old time sailor’s waiting wife.

_ Well, I’m no one’s wife, _ Lex thought, turning his focus back to the Earth that was now his to do with as he pleased. _ And I’m certainly not waiting for any man. _

***

Now the Man of Steel had returned to find the world as smooth as a mirror and more broken than he’d left it. For Lex, it was hard to feel as if he not failed, though he had not given up in his own heart.

“It’s time to test the strength of that trust, Clark,” Lex said, inputting a final set of commands on the desk. Many motors hummed behind the wall. Rooms were rearranging themselves. Shudders dropped over the remaining windows with a clatter. “Just know, before you see what I have to show you, that I trust you, too. With my life. Whatever else I am, I am always your friend.”

Lex had not looked away from Clark’s eyes, and Clark had not looked away from his. They held each other’s gaze as the entire wall opposite the now shuttered windows began to fold itself open to reveal a huge laboratory. White, sterile light flooded the room. Steel instruments, surfaces, sinks. Glass cabinets and a complex dozen machines. Fats tubes of green and purple neon liquids. Black and white tiled floors. There was a square, glass encased room in the center, like a quarantine. Inside it was a single reclined, full body chair that looked to be made of a molded plastic and green gel, out of which dozens of wires protruded. In the chair, shaved almost bald and connected to a bank of steel machines by bundles of tube and wire, including a few which seemed to lead right into her skull, lay Chloe Sullivan.

She was so still that even to Lex, she looked like a corpse.

And to Clark? Well, Lex had never been able to see the world through Clark’s eyes. No matter how badly he might have wanted to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After writing only original fiction for years I have to say, fan fiction really feels like freedom (*ﾉ´□`)ﾉ♪♬ 
> 
> Finally, I can be romantic ❤️


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Wonderland, where the warm winds blow sweet across fields of corn, and the wild sky has no end ❤️

Lex’s mouth tasted like river, sweet and gritty, and his throat and lungs felt hollowed out. Despite this, there was a new lightness in his chest. The walls of his heart felt thin and warm, like the walls of a floating paper lantern. Usually, they felt like steel. In the sky above, clouds grazed like wild animals on blue yonder. Lex had never felt so alive. He was twenty-one, and had just come back to life.

“You okay?” There was a hand resting lightly on Lex’s chest, as if searching for a heartbeat. The hand belonged to a young man who was kneeling beside him. The sharp, high bones and fair, almost pale skin. Blue eyes as broad as the sky. Witching hour black hair. Absurdly good looking. Lex understood immediately. The man he’d hit with his car on the bridge had somehow pulled Lex out of his car, out of the river, and then performed CPR. His life had been saved by a beautiful stranger. Lex tried to touch his own lips, but found he was too weak. He felt a bit like he had fallen into a fairytale. Or perhaps crashed into one.

Lex tried again, lifted his hand and put it over the man’s, still resting on his chest.

“Thank you. I owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I’m sorry about your car,” the young man said. He patted Lex’s chest softly and looked out at the river. He seemed embarrassed to be holding hands. There was even a faint blush spreading in his cheeks. A pale dawn. “It looked pretty cool.”

Lex tried to sit, but then felt dizzy. 

“Careful,” the young man said, putting a hand on Lex's shoulder and easing him back down. His hair looked slicked back with river water. Lex could see the outline of his well muscled torso through his clinging, wet shirt. Rising and falling with his breath.

“ _ You _ look pretty cool,” Lex said dizzily.

It would be his turn to be embarrassed when Clark brought this up much later. But for now, the young man turned a deeper red, and Lex passed warmly back into unconsciousness.

*** 

The rapiers flicked arcs of weak, dawn light across the room like sparks. The song of sliding metal and feet dancing light across the floor. Precision. Prediction. Improvisation. Awareness. Action. 

Perry, repost. Perry, repost.

Lex tried to clear his mind of everything but the sword in his hand. The rhythm of combat. The olympic level swordswoman attempting to thrust her sword through his neck. He fenced every morning before dawn, setting his mood for the battle of the day. But there was discord in his mind now, a thread of lightning that would not settle in his heart. Its name was Clark Kent.

Clark Kent was eighteen and in his last year of high school. He was adopted. His parents were farmers, community leaders, and good, simple people by all accounts. Clark was 6’2’’ with thick black hair and devil’s blue eyes. He had a high, sharp bone structure and a lean, muscular body. So did Lex, but Lex had a highly controlled diet, slept only three hours a night, and practiced acrobatics, martial arts, and fencing every morning. Where did Clark’s body come from?

And this was not the only mystery Lex had uncovered about the man. Lex was a speed reader with an eidetic memory and a very extensive network of connections, and he’d caught up on years of strange Smallville history in a single night. Mystery accidents and illnesses. Strange mutations in people and a high fatality rate in town ever since the meteor shower. New cases of a strange fungus that ate dead flesh. And Clark Kent at the center, somehow always there to keep the world from ending. The more he read, about Clark Kent and the town in general, the greater his sense of mystery and unreality grew.

Clark, it seemed, was everyone’s hero.

For a moment, when his car had gone over the bridge, Lex had flown. He had known freedom. He had seen the horizon of Smallville, a sunset infinity. An endless possibility. He had let go of all he had thought was important as he’d faced his death and now he knew; none of it had been important in the first place. The game of markets and margins and stacking numbers. The desire to dominate, to destroy and conquer. His battle to overtake his father, to accumulate power. The protective cage he had built around his own heart, and the protective distance he had created in himself so that he would never have to know or touch or care about any other person. All of this had left him for a moment, and now that he was breathing again, he saw how heavy it all was, and useless.

The swordswoman was pushing him back. The thin metal of her fencing foil whipped through the air like flashes of camera light. They were in the main hall of the Luthor mansion in Smallville. It had an almost gothic quality to it, stone outer walls, heavy wood, and high draped windows, and it added to the creeping sense that Lex was slipping into another world, another self.

Clark Kent had introduced him to a new Lex Luthor.

During those few suspended moments at the bridge, Lex had felt something new, and it was still lingering in him now. Peace. He felt peace, and something else, too, even softer. 

_ I should be dead, _ he thought, and there was wonder in his heart.

Lex’s back hit a wall and the swordswoman pinned him hard in the chest with her foil. She had beaten him again. Lex flipped the sword in his hand and threw it hard with an angry grunt. This was mostly for show. Though inside he was reworking the puzzle of himself, he would never allow his cool exterior to break. He might be undergoing a revelation, but he was no fool. He knew his father kept tabs on him through his fencing coach, among many others, and he could not be seen softening or changing until he was ready to make his move. 

The sword flew and was about to impale the nearest wall when a firm hand reached out and caught it by the hilt midair. Lex saw a young man with high cheekbones and pink lips holding the sword with a surprised and amused grin on his face.

Lex’s defeat was instantly forgotten.

“Clark,” Lex said, slipping off his fencing mask. Lex was almost surprised to hear the genuine pleasure in his own voice. Clark must have wandered into the mansion looking for Lex. He was wearing jeans and a tight red t-shirt under a blue jacket. “Good reflexes.”

The world was full of things that would never be known, Lex understood. Logic was a glass bowl that would forever be cracked and leaking. Lex should be dead. He had seen his mangled car, had forensic teams examining it in a special garage at this moment, ready to tell him what he already knew. He should be dead.

Logic alone could not explain his life or the workings of the world around him.

It was difficult for Lex to admit this. Understanding had always been his drug, the scepter with which he ruled his world and the creed that he followed. But seeing Clark standing in the gothic light, among furniture still draped in white cloth and dust, Lex felt that soft wonder growing again in his chest, and with it, the dawning of new desires. 

And beautiful things, which escaped understanding.

“Is this a bad time?” Clark said, glancing down at the sword in his hand, then up at Lex’s fencing partner who had put down her sword and mask and was eyeing Clark up and down with unapologetic appreciation. She smirked at Lex on her way out of the room. Excellent. His father would no doubt hear that Lex was already entertaining local boys. Well, this wouldn’t be the first time, Lex supposed. It even offered a decent smoke screen, of sorts.

“No, I think Nikki has sufficiently kicked my ass for the day,” Lex said, nodding at his fencing coach. Then he picked up her discarded sword and pointed it at Clark. “Would you like a crack at it?”

“While that is a tempting offer, and I was the Kansas Camp Hope fencing champion, that one day we fenced when I was fourteen,” Clark said, bending the sword experimentally in his hand, “I’m not here about that. I’m here about the brand new truck you sent over to my house this morning.”

“You don’t like it?” Lex said, already thinking of other gifts he could arrange. What said,  _ You’re my hero in a world with no heroes,  _ and also,  _ Nice to meet you _ ?

“No, I like it. My father did warn me about accepting gifts from Luthors though. You’re known to keep receipts and call in favors, from what I hear,” Clark said. Suddenly, he lunged into a perfect thrust, then jabbed with the rapier a few times.  _ Good form for someone who hasn’t fenced since they were fourteen, _ Lex noted.

“You don’t trust me. I understand,” Lex said. “But you saved my life. The truck’s just a small gift. And it’s my father who likes to make debts, not me.”

“Then what do you like to make?” Clark said, bending his body into a perry, then another thrust. “And better yet, what are you doing in Smallville? It’s not exactly an international seat of power. Are you in exile?”

There was an almost challenging note to Clark’s strong, deep voice that Lex found refreshing. This man was not afraid of Lex or intimidated, nor was there any resentment in his voice. Just caution, interest, and excitement? Lex could read a tone of voice like sheet music, but something about Clark was throwing him off. Was he star struck? Good lord, he might be. Lex rested the tip of the sword on the ground and draped his hands over the hilt.

“If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have given you the same answer I had since I was fourteen. The same answer my father would give today. _ I make empires _ ,” Lex said. Then Lex sprang forward on a whim and perried one of Clark’s sword thrusts. There was a soft clash of metal. Clark froze and met Lex’s eyes.

“What’s different about today?” Clark said. He smelled a bit like sweet grass and road dust, as if he’d kicked up a cloud while running.

_ I met you. _

“Today I want to make friends,” Lex said. Then he smiled. It was his razor-moon smile. A look that was both dangerous and inviting. He’d first used this smile when he was sixteen and he had to seduce a northern European prince to obtain a rare mineral mining contract for LuthorCorp in the prince’s country. It had served him well ever since. “And yes, I’m in exile here. Aren’t you?”

“And what about tomorrow, Lex? What will you want to make then?” Clark looked away, grinned, then bit his lip. He lowered his sword and turned around. “I think I should return the truck.”

“I’ll fence you for it,” Lex said to his back. Clark stopped and looked over his shoulder with a raised brow. “You’re here to find out my intentions, aren’t you? You’re protective of this town, even if it’s getting a little small for you. It’s your home and I understand that. It’s going to be my home too, whether I like it or not. You want to know if you can trust me? Well, I want to know if I can trust you. I’m a good judge of character, Clark. It’s a gift. And I think you’re worth the risk of trust. I knew it the moment I saw you on the hood of my car. Don’t leave yet. Please.”

Clark turned the rest of the way around. He was weighing the sword in his hand a little dubiously. “You have a lot more experience than I do, Lex.”

“I’ll go easy on you. Best of three, except you only have to get one touch. Something tells me those odds will work for you. I win, you get a new truck, no strings. You win, I take it back,” Lex said. “Either way, we’ll learn a little more about each other. My father always said you never really know someone until you’ve fought them.”

"You know, my friend Chloe said you were dangerous. She told me that somebody like  _ you _ ,” Clark said, pointing with the sword, “could do pretty much anything they wanted to a town like this. A lot of damage, or a lot of good. What do you want to do here?"

_ He’s talked to his friends about me,  _ Lex thought with an unfamiliar, simple pleasure.

“Is this an interview for your school paper?” Lex said. Much of the more reliable information he’d found about Clark and the town had come from the local school paper,  _ The Torch,  _ with bylines by Chloe Sullivan and Clark Kent himself. They were clean and accurate articles, if they relied a bit on speculative reasoning, well. This town felt a bit speculative on the whole to Lex.

“Maybe it is,” Clark said. “Does that mean you’ll lie to me?”

"Clark, you restarted my heart on that riverbank. I just want to return the favor," Lex said. He rested the tip of his sword on Clark's chest for a moment, it was satisfyingly firm, then he let the blunt tip slide off as he turned toward the window that overlooked the yard. The factory was sitting long on the horizon like a sheet metal castle. "For the town of course. I want a new beginning. After all, there’s almost nothing here at all but potential."

“Okay, I’ll fight you,” Clark said, a slight tinge of annoyance in his voice, just as Lex had planned when he’d jabbed at the town. “But I think you’ll find a little more here than you expect.”

“I expect a lot,” Lex said as he turned around and looked Clark up and down. “Let’s get you suited up.”

***

“En garde,” Lex said, then thrust his sword. Clark’s arm jerked and he blocked it. His form was a bit clumsy, stiff, but he had excellent reflexes and a very strong arm, Lex noted. Lex on the other hand could fence in his sleep. He smoothly perried a strong, but clumsy attack from Clark. The sun was higher now, and bars of thick light fell through the windows and lit the large hall. “Did you know I have a super power, Clark?”

“Really?” Clark said, fumbling the sword as he tried to focus on the conversation and the fight. Lex gave him plenty of room to recover. “What is it?”

“Money,” Lex said. “You might want to laugh, but it’s true. It comes with its abilities and its weaknesses. It has a dark gravity. One of the things it comes with is a fate. Do you believe in fate, Clark?”

“No,” Clark said, circling Lex with the point of his sword up and ready. “I think we make our own destinies.”

“I hope that that’s true in the end, but I’ve always had a destiny. My destiny is to become the villain, like my father before me. Don't feel too bad for me though. In a world with no heroes, villains have it easy,” Lex said, knocking away Clark’s experimental jabs with the blade. Lex thrust at about half speed and Clark jumped back and started circling again.

“So you're Smallville's new villain? That’s not what I was hoping to hear, Lex.”

“Yesterday I was. Then I died.” This time Lex attacked, no feints, but quick and accurate and in a series. Clark blocked each one. “My entire life has been a dead end, with my father’s life waiting for me at the end of it. No matter what I did to escape him, escape what I was becoming, it never changed. I don’t want to be the villain, Clark. I don’t want to be my father.”

“Then what do you want?” Clark said, narrowly blocking Lex’s sharp thrust. They were kicking up dust and sunlight now in a strange dance.

“I came to Smallville expecting to find another dead end. But I found something else instead.” Lex feinted a high thrust, but Clark lowered his guard just in time to catch Lex’s sword. Lex twisted his arm, continued forward, and pinned Clark’s shoulder around the guard. They stood like that for a moment, Lex breathing hard, his sword pinned to Clark. “I found hope.”

Lex stepped back. He was breathing hard, and he could smell his own hot breath in the mask. “I want you to be a part of that hope, Clark. I want us to be close. I want to make a new destiny.”

“You’re a smooth talker, but why does it feel like you’re trying to sell me something?” Clark said. Lex noted that he wasn’t breathing hard at all. “I know your reputation. I do work at a paper. You’ve left a lot of broken hearts in your wake. In fact, the hearts were the least of the broken things. How can I trust you?”

“If you can’t trust that, maybe you can trust this,” Lex said, then he lunged with the sword. Clark blocked, just as Lex expected him to. Clark was holding back. Now he was sure. Clark was much more in the rhythm of it now, and the knocking, metal beat of their swords was getting faster and faster. Slivers of reflected light scattered like confetti. “When I went over that bridge, I saw something impossible. You, Clark. I believe the evidence of my eyes. I hit you with my car, and you walked away unharmed. You’ve already made me realize that the world is a much stranger place than I’d ever imagined. I’ve never felt as alive as I did when I woke up to your face on that river bank. I felt lighter, like I’d let go of the person I was. Like I could finally be the person I always hoped I would be.”

“And who do you want to be?” Clark said, stumbling back slightly. Lex pressed the attack, flicking his sword under Clark's guard and pinning him in the solar plexus. It was like hitting a wall.

“I thought we could find that out together. If you’ll give me a chance.”

Clark stepped back. “This is getting pretty serious,” he said, voice slightly muffled by the mask.

“Maybe I couldn’t survive getting plowed by a speeding car, but I’m a serious man, Clark. What kind of man are you?”

Clark seemed to regard him for a moment, then he took off his mask and tossed it on a nearby table.

“Giving up already? You’ve still got one more chance,” Lex said, taking off his own mask, wiping his sword in a flourish. But Clark was grinning. The light from the window was tangled in his hair, and his eyes were bright and excited.

“You think that just because you've got a cute face and nice green eyes I’ll suddenly trust you? We both know you saw me through your windshield, yeah, so I guess there’s no point trying to hide it. I am a little different, Lex. You’ll find that a lot of things are a little different here in Smallville. But I don’t want to be used, and I don’t want you to use this town either.”

“So you think I’m cute?” Lex said, running his fingers over the smooth skin of his scalp, smiling despite himself. “Then how do you feel about using each other?”

Clark laughed. He was blushing hard and couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

“I want us to be close too, Lex. Really,” Clark said. Despite his now dangerously red cheeks, he was still meeting Lex’s direct gaze. “And that means being honest. And for the record, yes, I think you’re cute. Really cute. But don’t think that means I’m dumb. You’re a force in Smallville now, and I came here to find out what kind of force you are.”

“How are you different, Clark?”

Clark glanced away, then took a deep breath as if to steady himself.

“En garde,” Clark whispered, then he vanished into a blur of speed that Lex could almost not follow at all. The flash of metal falling through air like lightning. Lex felt himself hit hard in the chest. He was flying backwards. Clark stopped abruptly.

“Oh my God,” Clark said, dropping his sword arm. “Did I hit you too hard? Something just told me you’d dodge it. I’m so good about holding back.”

Lex hit the ground and rolled to his feet. “Don’t worry, it was just reflex,” Lex said, feeling his chest experimentally. “I jumped back with the impact. Otherwise you might have broken a rib. I see what you mean by different. I’ve never seen anyone move like that.”

When Lex looked up, he saw that Clark was crestfallen. “I’m sorry. I just got caught up in the moment.”

“Don’t worry about it, Clark. I don’t mind things a little rough,” Lex said, stretching his chest and arms. “But if you want to make it up to me, let me take you out.”

“Take me out?” Clark laughed, nervous and excited. He scratched at his cheek and looked away. “This is a small town, Lex. Where are you gonna take me? The one nice Italian restaurant on Main street? I think my principle is celebrating an anniversary there tonight, so it might kill the mood. The staff's been known to sing.”

“I was thinking Metropolis. It’s just a short helicopter ride away.”

Clark laughed again, a boyish excited sound that echoed in the hall. Lex felt a melting sensation all through his body. He hadn’t had a crush like this since, well,  _ ever. _

“As lovely as that sounds, Lex, I think it might be better for us to save flying for later.”

“You’re afraid to fly?” Lex said. Clark hummed noncommittally.

“Something like that. How about you buy me a coffee for now?”

“Whatever you want.” 

“I’ve got to get to school,” Clark said, stripping off his outer layer of fencing gear.

“Just one more thing,” Lex said. He tapped the point on his chest where Clark had hit him with the sword. It was tender, and Lex could tell it was going to bruise like a love mark. “Thank you for showing me that. But I need to ask, why? It was a big secret. Probably a bigger one than my secret desire to be a good guy. Do you trust me already?”

Clark looked down, reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. They belonged to the truck, nearly forgotten between them. Clark held them flat in his hand and examined them. Then he looked up at Lex. “I’m a good judge of character too, Lex. And I think it’s always worth betting on somebody’s good side.”

“You’ll keep the truck then?” Lex said, grinning. He felt full of a soft fire. He’d closed enough deals in his time to understand the trust this symbolized between them.

“I’ll keep it for now,” Clark said, closing his hand around the keys, “but since I won, I reserve the right to return it anytime I feel like it. So don’t give me a reason to, okay?”

Lex was still pointing at his chest, and now he made a quick X over his heart.

“Promise,” Lex said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m still figuring this story out, but I think I’m getting into the groove of the characters now. And I honestly like only having a rough idea of the plot and taking it one chapter at a time, letting the characters lead. I think it’s taking me to unexpected places (*￣0￣)θ～♪


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